The Higher Power of Lucky

February 12, 2007
Patron's poignant Newbery-winning story about a girl who fears being abandoned by her legal guardian—and her only semblance of a family—sails along with believable childlike rhythms and kid's-eye-view observations. Listeners will especially appreciate Campbell's subtlety and smooth, comforting delivery in a heartbreaking scene in which 10-year-old Lucky recalls, with gentle support from her best friend, her deceased mother's memorial service. On the remainder of the recording, Campbell remains a welcoming guide to Lucky's world—populated by eccentric friends, the quirky townspeople of tiny, struggling Hard Pan, Calif.—and Brigitte, the guardian she desperately wants to keep, maybe with some help from a Higher Power. Campbell appropriately gives recent Parisian transplant Brigitte a French accent, though it's thankfully never overplayed. By program's end, listeners will be rooting for Lucky and Brigitte to remain together forever. Contains an interview with the author, in which Patron says she is working on a companion novel. Ages 9-up.

November 6, 2006
Patron's (Maybe Yes, Maybe No, Maybe Maybe) often poignant novel introduces 10-year-old Lucky, who lives in the California desert town of Hard Pan. After her mother died, Lucky's estranged father asked his former first wife, Brigitte, to travel from France and act as Lucky's guardian. The author's third-person narrative gently adheres to a child's perspective and reveals the warm relationship between Lucky and Brigitte. As the heroine goes about her work at the Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center, she eavesdrops on the meetings of various 12-step programs held there, listening to "the anonymous people" talk about hitting rock bottom and then gaining control of their lives through a Higher Power. If she could find her own Higher Power, Lucky feels "pretty sure she'd be able to figure out the difference between the things she could change and the things she couldn't." One thing she hopes will not change is her life with Brigitte, whom she fears will return to her much-missed homeland and leave Lucky with a foster family. Through her search for an HP, Lucky makes a few discoveries-such as the true identity of "the crematory man," who handed her an urn bearing her mother's ashes at the funeral, and the hidden talents of her knot-tying friend Lincoln. When Lucky hits her "rock bottom," she decides to run away with her beloved dog during a dust storm, a risky move that leads to an uplifting denouement. Though Lucky's ponderings sometimes grow repetitive, the sympathetic, pleasingly quirky characters define this tightly-knit hardscrabble community, affectionately portrayed in Phelan's half-tone illustrations. Ages 9-11.